Tasmania no longer a governor's pleasure

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Richard Butler struggled from beginning to end with the role of Tasmanian viceroy.

It was a noble enough exit, the end to a bold but unfortunate experiment. Tasmanian Governor Richard Butler, who stepped down on Monday night, was an unlikely viceroy from the start. He was an avowed republican, an outspoken interlocutor on international relations and a flamboyant actor on the global stage. Tasmania was a small theatre for his particular talents. Mr Butler's appointment turned out to be one of the less inspired ideas of the late Jim Bacon, then premier of Tasmania. Mr Bacon foreshadowed a role for Mr Butler vastly different from past governors and one far beyond the mundane circuit of afternoon teas, school visits and agricultural show openings. "He will be an 'ambassador' for the state and play a major role in bringing the world to Tasmania," Mr Bacon promised. He was also to be paid more than the Governor-General. But the prospect of the Queen's representative spruiking their state to the world was a vision that many Tasmanians did not share.

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While there is no suggestion that Mr Butler did anything improper, his judgement on occasion during his 10-month tenure was open to question. Despite vowing to curtail his outspokenness, particularly on foreign issues, in late March Mr Butler launched a stinging attack on the Bush administration at a business lunch in Hobart. It drew an immediate and unprecedented censure from Premier Paul Lennon, who demanded that the Governor stop commenting on matters of foreign or domestic policy. Most of the other charges levelled against Mr Butler by his detractors have been relatively trivial. There was the fuss over an airline seat upgrade on a honeymoon flight to Vietnam. His Australia Day address took an oblique swipe at the Federal Government over healthcare and Australia's treatment of refugees. Then followed his failure to read out all the achievements at the Tasmanian cricket awards, a breach of etiquette at the Danish royal wedding and allegations of rudeness and arrogance towards an assortment of Her Majesty's Tasmanian subjects - none of which were hanging offences. Mr Butler, for his part, has claimed there was a malicious campaign waged against him, led by political enemies and powered by elements of the media. Indeed, there were many critics. Interestingly, they came from all sides of politics - Liberal, Labor and the Greens.

To some extent Mr Butler probably suffered from big-fish-small-pond syndrome. Public life in Tasmania is a goldfish bowl existence. The trade-off for bumping into the premier or, indeed, the governor in Hobart's Salamanca Place is that their every utterance, mode of dress and gesture becomes public property. Mr Butler was perhaps unprepared for the swirl of gossip and accompanying scrutiny of his every move. He believed the governor's job could be done in a "modern, creative way" - and perhaps that is a way for the future. But Tasmania, it seems, was not quite ready for Mr Butler's particular style of governing.